Robert Chase
Dr. Robert Chase was the diagnostic team's cardiologist and intensive care specialist during the first three seasons. He has been on the diagnostic team with House longer than either of other two members at the time. He returns in the fourth season as a member of Princeton-Plainsboro's surgical staff. In the sixth season, he returns to the diagnostic team, first working for Eric Foreman, then for House when House returns to head the team after his medical license is reinstated. He is portrayed by Australian actor Jesse Spencer. Biography Early Life Chase was born in Australia in about 1975. His father was Rowan Chase, who later became a wealthy and world renowned rheumatologist. Rowan had emigrated to Australia from Czechoslovakia a few years before Robert was born. The name of Chase‘s mother has never been revealed. It is presumed Robert has other siblings, but their names have never been revealed. However, Chase had a rough relationship with both his father, who was usually absent when Robert was growing up, and his mother, who was an alcoholic. Rowan left the family when Robert was in his early teens, which gave Robert no other option but to care alone for his alcoholic mother until her death, at least five years later which was approximately ten years before Season 1. Dealing with his mother helped him empathize with Luke Palmeiro, another teenager who was trying to deal with a parent who couldn’t care for themselves. With what appears to be a total lack of parental supervision during his adolescence, Chase admits to wild teenage years, when he experimented with drugs and sex. However, his father continued to support the family, usually to excess, so Chase also appears to have been spoiled during his adolescence and early adulthood as well. Despite the enmity between them, Rowan never failed to come through for Robert when he needed something, even if it was only an expensive vacation. Even when Robert started working at Princeton-Plainsboro, it was clear his father was financing his lifestyle as Robert, unlike the other fellows, never lacked for or cared about money. Higher Education Chase was raised a Roman Catholic, and although he is no longer observant, he still considers himself religious. In Damned If You Do, Chase reveals to a patient that he attended a seminary after graduating high school, quoting 1 Peter 1:7. In The Tyrant, he revealed that he took his seminary training in England. This aspect of his life was shown again in the episode Forever, when he said a prayer for the soul of a baby who died under his care. However, Chase had a crisis of faith while in the seminary and realized that it wasn’t for him. Instead, he went to medical school doing his pre-medical studies at the University of Sydney (as revealed in Season 7). He does not appear to have been an outstanding student. However, his later training was outstanding. As well as completing specialties in intensive care and cardiology, he also took a residency in neurosurgery at Melbourne Hospital, although he never obtained board certified status. Before the series Chase was the longest serving fellow at the start of the series, having been on the team for about two years. It appears he was interested in the job and asked his father to see what he could do. House admits that he hired Chase after Rowan called him, but has never made his reasons clear. Character Series 'Season One' Chase appears to be happy being House’s “yes man”. He does what he has told and, unlike Foreman and Cameron, is very unlikely to challenge House. In Cursed, Rowan visits the hospital claiming he is in town for a conference, but close observation of his behavior allows House to deduce that he didn’t go to conference and in reality, Rowan is dying from terminal lung cancer. Rowan was at the hospital to visit Dr. James Wilson, head of Oncology at Princeton-Plainsboro. Initially, Robert is intensely frustrated with his father's presence, but offers to buy his father a drink at the end of the episode. Rowan declines because he says he does not have time before he leaves again, and leaves without ever revealing to Robert his condition. Rowan also gets House to promise not to tell Robert either. In the episode Control, Chase makes a stupid, but luckily harmless mistake. When assigned to do an angiogram on the patient, he lets the radiology resident scan the wrong leg. Fearing for his job when House hits the roof over the mistake, and suspicious when House doesn’t gloat after diagnosing the patient, he finds evidence that House may have known about a condition that would have disqualified his patient from a life saving transplant and brings it to the new chairman of the board, Edward Vogler. Chase agrees to keep an eye on House in return for Vogler protecting his job. However, the plan doesn’t go well. In order to assert his authority, Vogler demands that House fire one of his team. Vogler also looks to see if Cameron or Foreman will be his snitch instead. When Cameron and Foreman stay loyal and House chooses Chase for the axe, Vogler tells him to chose someone else and House refuses. House buys time by agreeing to shill for Vogler’s new drug. House soon figures out that Chase was the one feeding information to Vogler, and Chase rubs his face in it. However, when Vogler is gone, House decides to make Chase’s life as miserable as possible instead. In Love Hurts, we learn that he has been into BDSM in the past, although he says that his familiarity with the fetish scene was only because he was dating a banker who liked to be burned. 'Season Two' Chase continues to have an active social life, but in Hunting, he visits Cameron when she was high on Ecstacy and she soon overwhelms him and has sex with him. Chase enjoys the encounter immensely, but Cameron immediately regrets it. However, the seed of his attraction to Cameron is planted. In The Mistake Chase learns that his father died of lung cancer. While dealing with the shock, he makes a mistake that costs a patient her life. Although he doesn’t reveal it to House, he figures it out and tells him to come clean about the reason. House is right and Chase is only suspended for a week (ironically, House has to work under Foreman’s supervision for a month over the same incident). Later, viewers find out that Rowan cut Robert out of his will, leaving him no money at all and requiring him to work during his vacation time to make ends meet. 'Season Three' Chase’s relationship with House is permanently compromised in Finding Judas, even though he refuses to help Michael Tritter. House is dealing with pain and withdrawal symptoms when his dose of Vicodin is reduced and he misdiagnoses a patient with necrotizing fasciitis. However, at the last minute, Chase finds the right diagnosis, a form of porphyria. When he confronts House to cancel the planned amputation, House knocks him to the floor, although Chase is finally able to convince House. However, the incident shows Chase he can never please his demanding boss. Cameron begins a "friends with benefits" relationship with Chase in season 3 after the episode Insensitive. Chase begins to fall for Cameron, but she does not return his feelings. A moment in Fetal Position clarifies Chase's feelings for Cameron when a patient remarks that she had "never seen him glow" like he does in a picture taken while gazing at a picture of her (Cameron). However, when he informed her that he wanted to take their relationship forward, she ended it. Despite Cameron's refusal to reconcile, Chase asks her out every Tuesday, saying "It's Tuesday...I like you." At the end of Season 3, Chase is promptly fired by House following an outburst over his treatment of Foreman but the official reason is that he has been around the longest and has learned all he can from House. Later, Cameron realizes her feelings for Chase and the two begin a relationship. 'Season Four' Chase plans on moving on, but Cameron gets a job in Princeton-Plainsboro’s emergency room as the senior attending physician. Despite a wealth of options, he asks Cuddy for help staying in Princeton so he can be close to Cameron. Cuddy manages to convince Dr. Dave Thomas, the chief surgeon, to give Chase a position on the surgical staff so Chase can work towards being board certified. House doesn’t notice that Chase is back at the hospital (although he catches a glimpse of him at one point), but during The Right Stuff Chase shows up in the observation room of the operating theater, this time with the right diagnosis. However, House has no intention of hiring him back. Nevertheless, Chase often becomes House’s “go to” surgeon when he wants to try something tricky or dangerous. House slowly begins to realize that Chase is the most talented surgeon on the staff and he actually prefers Chase to most of the other surgeons. During the season, Chase stops being the "Shiny Haired Wombat", that he was for the first three seasons. He starts losing his 'shiny' and ' overly cute' complexion, trading his pristine blond hair for dishwater blond, and carries a constant 'five o'clock shadow'. It is almost as if leaving House's team has matured him. 'Season Five' Chase and Cameron’s relationship becomes more serious, although Chase is often worried that Cameron is afraid to commit to him. They work through a phase where Cameron is not letting him keep anything at her apartment. When he tries to propose, he finds Cameron dodging the question. Once he does pop the question (and she accepts), they work through other major hurdles, including a debate over her late husband’s semen, and a near-death episode at his bachelor party. However, at the end of Season 5, they marry. 'Season Six' Chase and Cameron’s marriage starts very well. However, in the episode The Tyrant, Cuddy asked Chase to work for Foreman on the diagnostic team until he replaced the departed Taub and Thirteen. However, while working on the case of the brutal African dictator Dibala, Chase met someone in the clinic who told Chase not to treat Dibala due to the fact that when they treated him, he was going to go back to Africa and kill all of the "cockroaches". Chase later learned the man had been part of one of Dibala’s rape squads and had been forced into it by Dibala’s henchmen. Chase wound up faking test results using another person’s blood and the treatment that Foreman gave Dibala killed him. Foreman found out about it but Chase told him that if the cops were coming for him to let him know so that he could tell his wife. However, they managed to keep it from becoming public, thanks to a little help from House. However, Chase couldn’t deal with his conscience. Although he felt he had done the right thing, it still wore on him. He tried to get absolution from a priest, but was refused until he took the legal consequences of his act. The strain hurt his relationship with Cameron, who felt Chase was having an affair. Finally, Chase came clean to Cameron, who forgave him. However, House started questioning why Cameron went so easy on him. Chase tried to dismiss it, but during a case where House was trying to get all his team back together again, Chase realized he still wanted to work for House and asked to return to the team. House got everyone back except Cameron, who realized House had the right diagnosis all along but was merely manipulating everyone to get them back. She also realized House was right about her and Chase, and that Chase’s decision about Dibala was a direct result of working for House - a man who refuses to live by the moral judgments of others. She leaves Chase, House and Princeton-Plainsboro. Everyone expects Chase to be upset about Cameron’s departure, but he’s remarkably sanguine about it. When all his friends press him to talk about it, he deliberately strikes House to get them to start thinking about that instead. Whatever his motives, the tactic works and people start leaving him alone. Chase gets insight about himself when he goes speed dating with House and Wilson. House bets him a hundred dollars that he can act like an uncaring, unemployed American and still get plenty of women interested in him just because of his looks. To Chase’s surprise and dismay, he gets plenty of matches even when he treats women poorly. He realizes that his previous relationships may just have been due to his looks. He turns to Thirteen, who has the same problem. She tells him that its always tough to get to what people really want and that good looking people have to be able to deal with people who are just after them because of their looks. When Chase delays signing the final divorce papers, Cameron comes back to insist. When they are isolated when the hospital goes on Lockdown, they work through the issues in their relationship and Cameron admits that it’s not all his fault and that she has problems with relationships too. They dance, make love, and leave on good terms. 'Season Seven' Chase is still happy being on House’s team and generally catering to his whims. However, he also makes it clear to Thirteen that he is interested in her; he asks her if she would have sex with him before she leaves, supposedly as a joke. She gives him a very strange look, before being interrupted.Later on he asks about the look she gave him and repeats the question. She shakes her head and says no, but then gives him a hug, which leads to him getting mixed signals. He also becomes rather promiscuous, openly dating several attractive women at once, including the short-lived fellow he hired to replace Thirteen. Relationship [[House|'House']] It is unclear why House hired Chase. House claims that he did it after receiving a call from Chase's father, but it is unlikely that this was the only reason. In any case, House has never been clear, paralleling a similar mystery about why Cuddy hired House. Chase is often considered the weak link of the team, but in fact he came up with more diagnoses/good ideas than Cameron or Foreman for each of the first three seasons and also showed some important breakthroughs once he made it back to the team in Season 6.. *In Sports Medicine, the team determined the underlying illness was cadmium poisoning, but only Chase figured out the source; marijuana is often grown in cadmium-contaminated soil and the patient had been smoking it despite his denials. *In Airborne, it was Chase who eventually tracked down the fact the woman's house was filled with toxic gas that had traveled through a connecting pipe from a house being treated for insect infestation. *In Finding Judas, Chase figures out the patient is suffering from a rare genetic disease just before surgery is performed based on House's recommendation that the patient has flesh-eating bacteria. *In The Right Stuff, Chase hits upon the right diagnosis when he drops in on The Applicants doing surgery. *In Private Lives, Chase correctly diagnoses the patient with a faulty heart valve merely because she said she was uncomfortable lying flat on her back. at the bar.]] Chase also seems to have House's ability to think outside the box, and comes up with good treatment and testing ideas, starting with the idea of confirming tapeworm by doing a simple x-ray in Pilot to coming up with the idea of doing exploratory surgery on a fetus in Fetal Position. He also comes up with a procedure to save the patients eye in Detox, and it was his idea to do a transcranial ultrasound to look for bleeding in the episode Kids. It should also be pointed out that before joining House's team, Chase already had completed a double specialty in intensive care and cardiology and had started a third in neurosurgery. It is also unclear what House thinks of Chase. House goes from belittling his opinion, to letting Chase hug him, to calling him an idiot, to going far out of his way to let Chase keep his job in the episode The Mistake. Later, he even puts up with letting Chase hit him in the face. He also begins to tell Chase his father is dying in Cursed before Chase, referring to House's earlier statement about Chase hating his father, cuts him off and says that he loves his father but finds it easier not to expect anything from someone who clearly doesn't care for him. Whatever House's opinion of Chase, it has always been clear that Chase worships and fears House. Chase usually follows House's instructions, and takes any insults House dishes out without retaliating. Chase rarely disagrees with anything House has to say, pointing out to Foreman that no matter how many times Foreman disagrees with House, not only is House right, but he manages to convince Cameron and Foreman of his point of view. However, by the third season, it was clear that Chase was tired of waiting for House's praise or appreciation. Chase does seem to genuinely like him though, and hugs him when he thinks House is dying of a brain tumor in Half-Wit In Human Error, House fires Chase after Chase has an outburst over House's feeble attempts to try to keep Foreman from leaving, House giving the excuse that Chase has been there the longest and either can't learn any more from him or he hasn't learned anything at all. This was possibly due to Wilson telling House he was afraid of change, possibly due to Chase's outburst, or possibly due to Chase's growing diagnostic skills throughout season three. In The Right Stuff, while House and his many applicants are trying to come up with a diagnosis, Chase hits upon the right one. As Chase develops as a surgeon, House not only uses him as his “go to” guy, but is more than willing to give opportunities to Chase to show up more senior surgeons just to tick off the chief of surgery. Marriage with Doctor Allison Cameron Chase has had an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with Dr. Cameron. The first incident occurred when Cameron experimented with Methamphetamine and called Chase over to her house. However, later on in the third season Cameron intimated she would be interested in a "friends with benefits" arrangement which, against Chase's weakening protests quickly evolved into having sex in dangerous places, such as a patient's bedroom and several places on the hospital premises. Chase began to develop real feelings for Cameron, but Cameron did not return the feelings and called the relationship off. In Human Error, she seeks Chase out and they are last seen together at Chase's apartment. In the fourth, however, they have a much more open relationship, often staying the night with each other. In the fifth season episode Saviors, Chase breaks off his relationship with Cameron because she has been distant; the reason for this was because she found an engagement ring in his sock drawer and she did not want him to propose because of Kutner's recent suicide. In the end, however, she tells Chase that "doesn't care how it happens, only that it does." He proposes to her, and she accepts. The next episode, Under My Skin, has him apparently calling off the engagement--or at least indefinitely postponing their marriage--after Chase decides he is unwilling to marry Cameron until she has no doubts about their relationship. At the end of Both Sides Now Chase and Cameron marry. In episode Teamwork Cameron presses Chase to quit PPTH in an effort to run of being eventually discovered about The Tyrant. After thinking it through, Chase decides to stay at PPTH and to face the consequences if there are to be any. Cameron then decides to leave him because Chase chooses "House" instead of her and he cannot distinguish between good and evil anymore. Lockdown Shows Cameron getting Chase divorce papers for him to Sign. PPTH is sealed due to a missing baby and this lets them alone in a room to talk about their relationship. Cameron tells Chase that she did love him and will miss being with him. They make love for the last time. Other Characteristics None of the major characters in the series have children except for Cuddy, but Chase is clearly the character who is the most comfortable with them. He goes out of his way to put young patients at ease and to talk to them at their level. Chase is known to be easy flattered at, product of him never being recognized by his father, this resulting in him feeling well after being remarked as smart or handsome. In Private Lives Chase realizes women get close to him by his looks and becomes tired of it. This article was the featured article for November 2010. de:Robert Chase pl:Robert Chase Category:Characters Category:Doctors Category:Main Characters Category:Males Category:Featured articles